Every time there’s talk of a war or an insurgency, the Right wing begins to appear a little more farcical. This isn’t their fault entirely. Jingoism provides a platform for those who want to look like hawks to drum-up their chests. Saner voices are drowned out in the noise. For instance, whether you are on the Right or to the Left, you would not want Arnab Goswami to be your mascot. But as the very opinionated host of “India’s most watched TV news programme”, he becomes the truth of you. 

I spoke to a soldier recently who has served at the border and doesn’t wish to be named. He finds things a bit surreal. He’s very confused, for example, about why a party and demagogue who, just years ago, was rooting to have his family and friends beaten up and thrown out of Maharashtra, now wants to represent his interest by sending Salman Khan to Pakistan. Others representing his interest include a retired Army general and a Major. One keeps railing from his armchair about how jawans should be sent off to war. The other writes endless open letters about how the Army is dampened by the fact that Fawad Khan is a Bollywood film star. 

 On occasions, the traditional Right-wing media – like Organiser or Panchajanya – actually appears more measured in their reporting and opinionating than TV news. “The masochist calls for deep strikes into Pakistan may represent an expression of anger of the general public, but they do not fall in the ambit of practicality,” wrote Jaibans Singh in Organiser after the Uri Terror Attack. “Indian real estate along the Line of Control (LOC) and International Border (IB) with Pakistan is highly developed and economically vibrant. The Pakistan side, on the other hand, is desolate and underdeveloped.”

He also noted: “The terror camps are temporary in a nature. Going for a deep or shallow strike over there is not going to accrue any worthwhile tactical or strategic advantage.” 

The Right-leaning media does have its days, though. Panchajanya editor Hitesh Shankar began his post “Surgical Strike” editorial with a Premchand quote to seemingly invoke military action: “Bhay ki charam seema hi saahas hai (rough translation: On the outer boundary of fear, lies courage)”. The first line of Organiser Editor Prafulla Ketkar’s editorial read: “Vijayadashmi arrived in Bharat even before the starting of Navaratri.” 

What militarism should mean

There’s reason why Vijayadashmi doesn’t arrive before the starting of Navratri. Militarism, simply defined, is “the belief that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests.” Without getting into the Rubik’s Cube of how the strikes may be evidenced – taking the Indian Army on their word for their occurrence and the politicians and media on theirs for the significance of this event – let’s assume that these strikes have demonstrated our preparedness to aggressively defend national interests. 

But what about maintaining a “strong military capability”? Kishalay Bhattacharjee wrote in Newslaundry that, according to the CAG, India wouldn’t be able to sustain a 10-day war with the ammunition it had. “The armed forces should ideally work with 30 per cent cutting edge equipment, 40 per cent current technology and the remaining 30 per cent with obsolete weapons,” he wrote.

In the NL Hafta before the last one, Bhattacharjee spoke about how this state of preparedness would adversely affect India trying to climb the “escalation ladder” with regard to Pakistan. 

Lt Gen H S Panag, also a Newslaundry columnist, refuted this in the next NL Hafta, saying the situation envisaged by the CAG, where all soldiers and weapons would be employed by the Indian Army all at once, was a hypothetical situation. This doesn’t resolve the question of obsolete defence inventory, however. Or the story behind it.

Read Report No. 19 of 2016, by the CAG on the “Army, Ordinance Factories and Defence PSUs”, which reviews the Defence Ministry’s performance in this in 2014-15. (Report No. 17 looks at the Indian Navy, 18 at the Airforce.) 

Here’s an excerpt from the Army report overview: “Inordinate delay in supply of critical weapons and equipment by Defence PSUs during XI Army Plan (2007-12), hampered the modernisation and capability enhancement plan of Indian Army. Audit observed that contracts valuing Rs 30,038 crore which account for 63 per cent of the total value of DPSUs contracts concluded by the Ministry during XI Army Plan, were delayed. Major reasons for delay were undue time taken in development, delay in successful evaluation of pilot sample, heavy dependence of DPSU on foreign vendors, ambiguity in contractual terms, etc.”  

Chapter VIII on Defence Public Sector Undertakings, over and above indicting one government or the other, establishes a continued culture of ham-handedness in dealing with the defence sector. Will the shift to private sector, indicated by the recently announced Reliance defence deal – which set the Reliance stocks climbing – aid in curing this malaise? How will governments monitor private companies if they couldn’t successfully hold to account those it owned? These are questions militarists should ask, but they seem nowhere on the horizon.

Even more disconcerting are the findings of the CAG with regard to the food that is provided to the troops at the borders. “The overall deficiency in actual procurement against the indented quantities for 2014-15 was upto 66% in four out of six items procured,” Chapter II, on the Ministry of Defence, says. On quality of rations, “68 per cent of the feedback reports received from the consuming units were graded as satisfactory and below.” 

“Army continues to consume ration,” the report says. “Even after the expiry of original shelf life.” On extensions granted to the Estimated Storage Life (ESL) of rations: “In some cases extension was granted even up to 28 months after expiry of the ESL.”  The CAG found further that the Parliamentary Accounts Committee had submitted twelve recommendations in 2011 to improve and streamline the supply chain management of ration. Only two have been implemented in full. 

But where’s the outrage?

Chapter 1, the introduction of the report, says, “The Ministry of Defence did not send replies (March 2016) to 17 paragraphs out of 23 Paragraphs featured in Chapters II to VIII.” 

As Bhattacharjee has mentioned, this report is in the public domain. It was put there, knowing fully well that potential enemy nations would have access to it, because civil society and media – from the Right and the Left – would have an opportunity to question the government and demand that armed forces get what they really need.

But when the report was tabled this year, it got practically no play. Because, obviously, the only way we can buttress the morale of our troops is by screaming slogans, banning Pakistani actors and arresting students at Jawaharlal Nehru University. Providing them with the food and equipment they direly need, must not be real solutions.

Pakistani actors are not an issue

What has gotten play, instead, is news about Pakistani star actors. We may be at war soon. We seem to be making strides in international diplomacy but the issue of the verifiability of the surgical strikes will have to be watched closely. Attempts at counterstrikes by terrorists continue. 

But Fawad Khan – not Indo-Pak trade and professional relations on the whole, mind you – has captured a bulk of our news space and, consequently, imagination. Put yourself in the shoes of an outsider for a moment, and imagine what this does to our newly-acquired international standing. Here’s a nation that’s trying to define new paradigms for dealing with terrorism but can’t seem to rid itself of a hair-tearing obsession with a foreign film star who has infiltrated its cinematic pantheon.

What a quandary.

Why has this become a big issue? Because a party gasping for relevance has marshaled Right-wing sentiments to blow wind into its own trumpet. The Maharashtra Navnirman Sena was down to one Member of Legislative Assembly in the last Assembly polls, and even that MLA was considering whether he should leave, according to reports. But, like McCarthyism, which rode on the bullying of the Hollywood Ten, Raj Thackeray believes Bollywood will resurrect him.

Last season, he made Amitabh Bachchan his target for orchestrating a broader attack on fellow Indians from other states. Now, three years after Bachchan shared stage with Thackeray at his party’s seventh anniversary celebrations, he’s expanded his ambit to uber-nationalism and foreign immigrants (“Are we short of artistes in our country? Why do we need Pakistani artistes?”).

But most importantly, Raj Thackeray isn’t Joseph McCarthy, because the latter was appointed by the government to chair a senate committee for his witch-hunt. Thackeray has appointed himself. Still, an array of voices have jumped onto the bandwagon of a party that was last prominently in national news for violating noise pollution norms. There is the Shiv Sena, that’s desperately trying to remind everyone that, notwithstanding the promise of young Aditya Thackeray, they were the first word in unreasonableness.

The BJP has been pulled into this inconsequential debate via a questionable and relatively insignificant politicians, Sangeet Som, whom the party is often wont to tuck away in that box they label ‘fringe’.

An argument for some voices on the Right, as well as liberals is: Why can’t Pakistani Actors simply condemn the Uri attack? The answer: Because it’s not so simple. They have a Prime Minister whose stance on Uri is a study in unreasonableness that even Raj Thackeray may not be able to aspire to. Nawaz Sharif refused to condemn the attacks, despite pressure from the US and UK – say reports. According to him, “India had no regret over its atrocities and brutalities” in Kashmir. Further, he believes, the attack was either an “Indian false flag operation” carried out to malign Pakistan and divert attention from Kashmir or a “retaliatory attack by the oppressed Kashmiris who are facing the worst form of brutalities from the Indian state terrorism”.

Ridiculous as Sharif may sound, it basically means that Pakistani actors condemning Uri would be taking a stance against their Prime Minister, in a country not particularly known for upholding free speech. If Ramya saying, “Pakistan is not hell” could get her charged with sedition in India, can you envision what Fawad and Mahira Khan taking this stand in the current scenario would mean for them in Pakistan?

To wrap, since this is a season for surprises, let’s end with two very surprising squeaks of reason from the Right. The first from Yogi Adityanath, who has said, “our fight is not against art and culture, it is against terrorism.” 

The second? Our god of banned things, Central Board of Film Certification Chief Pahlaj Nihalani. On the IMPPA deciding not to work with Pakistanis, Nihalani said, “By whose authority are they asking for this ban? Not one producer member of IMPPA is working with a Pakistani artist.” He also pointed out that, rather, the piracy of Indian films in Pakistan was a more pertinent issue. 

But, critically, if such an embargo must be imposed on Pakistanis, “Not just actors, but all professionals from Pakistan must be prohibited from working in India until relations between the two countries improve.” 

Then of course Nihalani, staying true to self, calls for a cessation of all trade and professional exchange, not only on Pakistan but also on China, for “supporting Pakistan”. This may be premature. And the fallout of this would be sizeable. The government would have to think of how to compensate or facilitate the businessmen and professionals affected. But, even if an extremely hawkish foreign policy, this is a policy, which can therefore be debated. Sending Fawad Khan back to Pakistan two months after he went there is not.